May swam over to the motorboat and easily climbed aboard, the neutral expression she bore already straining with concern.

“What the hell happened!? You were right behind me, and then you’re gone, and now you’re here, and hauling a gunboat? Are you even old enough to drive? Where did you go!?”

May let all her words out in a nonstop stream, gesticulating wildly, stopping abruptly at the end to staring at Robin, clearly expecting an answer to all of her questions.

“Um. I think that Tao was given some kind of option to become a dungeon boss, and he took it. I got caught in the dungeon as it formed.” He shrugged. “There is some kind of time dilation, I think. I was in the dungeon for more than a few hours, just running through a stupid obstacle course he set up to tire me out.”

Robin took a deep breath.

“I killed him, and a bunch of his pirate cronies, I think. They were in a shipping container, and I filled it with webs… I did not check on them. At all.”

May half-smiled at him, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder a couple times. “He didn’t leave you any other choice, kid. You did what you had to do.”

Robin nodded. He smiled abruptly, snapping up slightly, and reached into his pack.

“That reminds me! I got these boots from defeating Tao, but I think they will be much more useful for you.” Robin read her the description of the boots, pulling them out over his head. He ignored the grimace that flashed over May’s face when she saw them.

I already have a title that lets me breathe underwater and doubles my SWIM speed. The bonus to RUN would be useful for anyone, but the walking on water aspect… I think that might be handy, given…” Robin nodded towards the sea and the small collection of boats.

May nodded in return, taking the boots from Robin. She was still grimacing.

“Robin… These are so f… They are so ugly.”

Robin burst out laughing. May exhaled an indignant breath from her nose and sat down on the passenger seat, yanking off her boots. They were fairly ratty, from what Robin could see, and ugly or not, they were better than having wet feet all the time. “You can buy a cuter pair when we get back to society.”

Robin grimaced himself, looking out at the ocean.

We are probably both going to have to get used to being damp all the time, at least for a while. Who knows how big the ocean is now… or what is in it.

May had pulled the boots on, finding that they fit perfectly, and was tightening the straps. She had stopped grimacing, at least. Robin watched her for a moment, giving her a questioning thumbs up when he caught her eye.

“Yeah, they’re better than my old ones so shaddup and also thank you.” She gave him a slightly cheeky grin, and he nodded.

“You should try them out”, Robin said, lifting an eyebrow. “You definitely do not want to try new equipment for the first time in the middle of an emergency or an attack.” May nodded at him, and hopped over the side of the boat with no hesitation, moving from her sitting position directly into her leap. The boat shook with the force of the jump, rocking back and forth.

May landed on the surface of the water, leaving small divots, exactly as if she had landed on soft sand.

“Ugh… it’s so unstable. It would be exhausting to run for a long time on this. It’s just like being on the beach.” May wobbled around for a moment, slowly gathering confidence that the water would continue to remain solid beneath her feet.

“I’m going to go see if there is anything else around the ship. Might as well do something useful while I figure these out.”

Robin nodded, giving a small wave. “Be careful.”

May waved over her shoulder as she slowly began to jog towards the pirate vessel, gaining speed as she went.

Robin was startled by a notification popping into view, and he immediately opened it fully, willing it to become partially translucent. It had a secondary notification behind it, something that Robin had grown more adept at spotting.

Your familiar has molted into a new form! Your familiar has evolved into a Pink Star Mantis. The Pink Star Mantis is a primal predator, born before structure and substance had stabilized after the moment of ur-creation, already hunting the protothoughts and nascent forms of the earliest denizens of existence. The Pink Star Mantis predates certain physical laws of existence, and may come unbound from them for short periods of time. The Pink Star Mantis may range in size from fifteen centimeters to one hundred and twenty centimeters (15-120cm), and with expenditure of MANA, may change size freely. Motes Absorbed: Knowledge x1(Δ), Red Iron x1, Beast x1, Pride x1 Interest of the Spider The use of a Knowledge Mote has been empowered. Your familiar has gained an additional trait. Trait Acquired: Omniglot

Robin blinked, trying to absorb the information.

It is not great that it took so many Motes, but it seems worth it. I wonder if omniglot means that Opal will be able to talk to me, or just understand all languages. It would be nice if she could talk… Robin grinned to himself.

“Opal, that’s right!”, he sang, imitating the obnoxious Pokémon’s catch phrase.

He felt a slightly disapproving presence from his side, and turned to look, freezing when he saw the bright pink mass sitting on his shoulder.

Opal was staring directly into his eyes from mere centimeters away. Robin felt his sudden tension run out of him as he studied his familiar. She seemed to enjoy the attention, stepping in a quick circle like a high school girl showing off her prom dress.

Her eyes were still bright pink, though they appeared to have a false, shifting pupil as she focused on his dark form. She was roughly fifteen centimeters tall, about the size of an action figure. She was still pink, but she seemed to have streaks of a lighter pink that shimmered over her, almost like she was coated in an oil that only shimmered in shades of pink.

Opal, you are actually opalescent now!, he thought with glee, admiring his familiar’s new colors.

Her form seemed to be mostly the same as it always had, although she seemed to have small, delicate looking spikes that extended from the plates of each section of her abdomen. The spikes looked crystalline, the translucent material glittering slightly in the light.

“You look great, Opal. I am happy that your molt went well.”

Opal bobbed her entire thorax slightly while keeping her eyes on Robin, giving the impression of a martial artist bowing to their opponent before a match. Robin grinned at her.

Opal stared at him.

And normalcy is restored, he thought, turning to look for May. After a couple of minutes he spotted her trudging around the back end of the ship. She looked mildly annoyed, and as she got closer, Robin could see that she was stomping a little bit, making strange waves in the water that only seemed to start when she lifted her foot. She hopped into the boat, grunting a little as the water shifted beneath her.

“The boots are fine”, she grunted, shaking her head to cut him off as he opened his mouth to ask a question. “Hideous and completely at odds with the rest of my clothes, but they’re fine. It’s the pirate ship.I think the ship is re-arming itself, or regrowing new pirates, or something. I could see a couple walking around on the deck, but they looked like ghosts, blue, translucent, the whole deal.”

Robin nodded, looking at the ship as he considered her words. He could not see any of the pirates, but he had no doubt they were there.

“I think we should go soon. I was hoping that we could find some of the people that were in the boxes on the top of the ship, but… I do not know what happened to them at all. They might have become pirates for the new dungeon, but I am really hoping that they were displaced back to wherever they came from when I beat the dungeon.” He shrugged. “No way to know, really.”

May sighed. “Yeah… I hope so, too. No point beating yourself up about it, though. They were doomed before we got there anyway, so not being able to save them didn’t change anything.” She glanced back at the USN boat and spoke in a too-chipper voice, obviously trying to change the subject. “You stole a gunboat, though. That’s pretty nice.” She glanced askew at Robin, raising an eyebrow. “Where’d you learn how to steer a boat, anyway?”

It was Robin’s turn to sigh, turning back towards the boat’s steering wheel and settling into the seat.

“I had to tow my father around while he fished from an inner tube in the lake near our house.”

Robin checked the throttle idly. “He was usually too drunk to control the boat at the end, so I would load it onto the trailer and drive us the half-kilometer or so back to our house.”

May nodded, then shook her head. “Well that sucks.”

Robin snorted and nodded. “Yeah.”

May made eye contact with Robin and held it.

“Well, now we need to make a choice about where to go. We have boats, and we can travel decently far with that alone. We might be able to refuel somewhere, but I wouldn’t plan on that. If what happened on the land also happened on the sea, the sea is absolutely massive. We don’t have much of a chance to make it back to … America?”, she ventured.

Robin shook his head, smiling. “Well, for a couple of years, yes. But not originally. I was born on an American military base in Spain. We moved around a lot.”

“But that is not really relevant at the moment. We will have plenty of time to talk at sea, I think. But… I know where I want to go.” Robin took a deep breath as he contemplated his words.

“I want to go to Geelong. When I got the Coral Sea Island Internship, my dad made my brother apply to anything he could that had boarding, and he took the one that put him closest to me. We thought we would be able to visit… But the military security around the island would not approve me for regular travel, so I had to stay at the compound.”

May nodded. It had been the same for her, and she had been with the compound security team.

She spoke gently, like she was talking to an animal or a child. “What’s his name?”

Robin gave her a pained look, and then responded in the same tone. “His name is Atticus.”

May snorted and responded in a normal tone. “No, really. What’s his name?”

Robin glared at her. “His name is Atticus Alabi, thankyouverymuch.”

May tried to stifle her giggling, covering her mouth with her hands. She brightened and interrupted herself abruptly. “What happened to Opal? She shrank!” Robin called the notification again, reading it to her quickly. May nodded her approval.

“Geelong it is. That’s south by, what, two or three thousand kilometers? That’s a pretty significant trek, but I think we should be able to make it at least partway down the coast. We’ll hopefully find some other people on the way, too.” She let out a small laugh. “It would be pretty troubling if we didn’t.”

“Geelong it is. We should see about opening up this one,” Robin said, gesturing to the machine-gun covered USN boat. May nodded, moving over to the edge of the boat. She snapped a web out to the other boat from the railing of the motorboat, and then hopped onto the passenger seat to step onto the line. He had a thought and grinned. He spoke right as she stepped onto the line and began to zip away.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. I got a magic dragon ship from the dungeon.”

He took immense, although admittedly childish joy in her shocked expression as she zipped to the gunboat.